Category Archives: Inspiration

I’ve experienced it before… the nameless entity which would leave me breathless and nauseous after nursery drop off, fretting following conversations with friends and drained after social occasions. Before this, I had a brief and intense dance with postnatal depression, and before that years of feeling, well, not quite right. Always nameless, always there, and never explained… Anxiety.

It was only when my eldest son developed debilitating anxiety at 9 years old, that I finally named it, squared up to it and took it on.

His experience motivated me to DO something, ANYTHING to help him… And what began as a trip through the murky depths of ‘what went wrong’, and ‘what did I do?’ soon became a journey into his, and my happiness.

I came across ‘happiness’ as a tool for a better life when someone suggested I watch ‘The Happy Secret to Better Work’, a Ted Talk by Shawn Achor. (Definitely worth a watch.) In it Shawn talks about 5 scientifically proven ways we can consciously improve our performance at work through increased happiness. Gratitude, kindness, meditation, exercise, and writing a journal about your daily good, can raise your happiness ‘set point’ and lead to improvements across different aspects of life!

This caught my attention. Although not specifically about anxiety, the concept gave us a new direction… Rather than being bogged down in what went wrong, we started to focus on what was going right. Instead of only learning to manage the symptoms of anxiety, (important, but not the only work to do) we saw a bigger picture. We essentially turned our back on anxiety, and through diligence and working together, focused on happiness, and have barely looked back.

Almost 3 years on, it feels like ancient history.

Our journey to happiness went a bit like this…

The very first thing we noticed was a restored sense of empowerment, the feeling we could help him, and more importantly, that he could help himself. We began with gratitude, and looking at the positives each day. Initially this acted as a distraction, and helped to nip full on anxiety attacks in the bud. It also gave him a focus at bedtime, and helped him settle on difficult nights. Acting in kindness towards his brother, friends, neighbours, and his parents really helped him to not think about his worries as much, and gave him a sense of pride. We meditated in the mornings, went walking on the beach, and looked at homemade flash cards at bedtime each night. We tried anything we could to raise his happiness, and gradually we saw our little boy come back.

Personally, this journey found me crying, laughing, despairing, and jumping for joy. It has been my biggest challenge personally, and our biggest as a family. The fact we stood next to each other and did it together (this wasn’t always easy), means we have ended up closer as a family on the other side. Our silver lining!

I wrote Everyday Happy as my way of giving back, and helping those who may be travelling down the same road. It is a practical tool… a call to action… with the aim to empower people to lift themselves (and help their children) out of anxiety.

My mission? To change the world, one smile at a time.

I originally wrote this post for Edinburgh Gossip Girls online Magazine here!

In a time when so many children and young people are suffering anxiety disorders, it’s more important than ever to feed their souls with ‘art and stories and poems and music’

“Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play. “

Wise words from Philip Pullman, who received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005:

Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play. If you don’t give a child food, the damage quickly becomes visible. If you don’t let a child have fresh air and play, the damage is also visible, but not so quickly. If you don’t give a child love, the damage might not be seen for some years, but it’s permanent.

But if you don’t give a child art and stories and poems and music, the damage is not so easy to see. It’s there, though. Their bodies are healthy enough; they can run and jump and swim and eat hungrily and make lots of noise, as children have always done, but something is missing.

It’s true that some people grow up never encountering art of any kind, and are perfectly happy and live good and valuable lives, and in whose homes there are no books, and they don’t care much for pictures, and they can’t see the point of music. Well, that’s fine. I know people like that. They are good neighbours and useful citizens.

But other people, at some stage in their childhood or their youth, or maybe even their old age, come across something of a kind they’ve never dreamed of before. It is as alien to them as the dark side of the moon. But one day they hear a voice on the radio reading a poem, or they pass by a house with an open window where someone is playing the piano, or they see a poster of a particular painting on someone’s wall, and it strikes them a blow so hard and yet so gentle that they feel dizzy. Nothing prepared them for this. They suddenly realise that they’re filled with a hunger, though they had no idea of that just a minute ago; a hunger for something so sweet and so delicious that it almost breaks their heart. They almost cry, they feel sad and happy and alone and welcomed by this utterly new and strange experience, and they’re desperate to listen closer to the radio, they linger outside the window, they can’t take their eyes off the poster. They wanted this, they needed this as a starving person needs food, and they never knew. They had no idea.

That is what it’s like for a child who does need music or pictures or poetry to come across it by chance. If it weren’t for that chance, they might never have met it, and might have passed their whole lives in a state of cultural starvation without knowing it.

The effects of cultural starvation are not dramatic and swift. They’re not so easily visible.

And, as I say, some people, good people, kind friends and helpful citizens, just never experience it; they’re perfectly fulfilled without it. If all the books and all the music and all the paintings in the world were to disappear overnight, they wouldn’t feel any the worse; they wouldn’t even notice.

But that hunger exists in many children, and often it is never satisfied because it has never been awakened. Many children in every part of the world are starved for something that feeds and nourishes their soul in a way that nothing else ever could or ever would.

We say, correctly, that every child has a right to food and shelter, to education, to medical treatment, and so on. We must understand that every child has a right to the experience of culture. We must fully understand that without stories and poems and pictures and music, children will starve.

Written by Philip Pullman for the tenth anniversary of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2012.